Saturday, June 20, 2009

So this weekend I worked my way down to Philadelphia to try and get my groove back, Stella style*, after the Beatles: Rock Band. Why Philly? Well, I wanted to check out Wizard World Philadelphia! There were some amazing guests lined up; Kevin Maguire, Steve Dillon, Garth Ennis, EDWARD JAMES OLMOS, and a number of other cool guests. I hadn't been to a hardcore comics con in a long time, so I was pumped.

Unfortunately, after a few hours at the con, I realized; I'm kind of done with this schtick! A lot of things were overpriced, ESPECIALLY anything involving a pro: Alex Maleev wanted $150 for a sketch and would only talk to people through an agent, Kevin Maguire wanted $100 dollars for one of JUST a character's face (though he is an AWESOME dude and talked to, and shared a few awesome Justice League secrets with me), and Edward James Olmos wanted $50 for an autograph, and $20 just to take a photo with him! Not everyone was quite as demanding; the delightful Amanda Conner was selling head sketches for $40, and J. G. Jones, too, was doing them at a reasonably rate. Not surprisingly, though, they were both fully booked for sketches for the weekend. BUT, I am still really happy I came, as I got to talk to some awesome creators, and I ended up buying a TON of art from independent creators. Here's what I got:I met Joe Dunn from one of my favorite strips, Joe Loves Crappy Movies, who I didn't expect to see.

I ended up buying the Turtle shirt and book of another one of his delightful strips Turtle Vs Bunny!

I also found this excellent Duck Tales print by Craig Parrillo:

I found an amazingly dense Goonies print by Jim Horwat with more tiny references to different scenes in the movie (and the NES game!) than I could list here. He's also got a TOTALLY rad Evil Dead 2 print on his website that I'm considering ordering.

Then... then I found the COOLEST table at the whole show. These three guys were all holed up together, selling these prints, and I walked away with about a million pieces. First is Scott Derby, who did this amazing Shaun of the Dead poster:

I love the color and overall claustrophobic design of the piece. Plus the Simon Pegg is adorable. Then I met Tom Whalen, who was selling these other movie poster remakes, and he was selling one particular set I couldn't resist picking up:

While I was waiting for him to flip through, I also couldn't resist picking up this print of Earth's Mightiest Heroes:

And the third artist at this table, the man who got the most money out of me, was Dave Perillo, and well, I can't talk about all the pieces I got from him, so here they are in all their awesomeness.

These guys were all incredibly talented, incredibly nice, and I was really happy to have met them. Now I just need to figure out how to frame and where to put all this...Anyway, tonight is Kaiju Big Battle and then I plan to just wander around Philly for a few days, but I wanted to take a minute and share my swag. -casey-